My husband noticed white fuzz on our garden plants (mainly the blackberry bush and rose bush), as well as in other trees around our yard. After closer inspection, he realized these were aphids, which can destroy our garden. We have never seen an aphid problem this large before. Trees were turning white with this powdery residue and little white moths were hatching and flying around … which was especially noticeable when you’d tap a branch and the moths would take to flight. Quite alarming for a gardener. That’s how we started killing aphids with soapy water.
So, my husband decided to take action last night. Filling 5 gallon buckets with soapy water (Dawn dish soap and water from the hose), he would make extremely sudsy water and literally douse the plants with them … from all directions. My son took another bucket and doused the trees around the yard.
It looks like we’ll need to do this over the next week or so until they are gone, but hopefully we can take back control of our plants and get rid of these insects.
Basically, the soapy water removes the waxy coating from the aphids’ bodies and dehydrates the little suckers. If you have a small infestation you can use this same method by wiping the stems/leaves with the soapy water solution. Our infestation was so massive that Johnny and James took the extreme route and doused the trees in hoping to get as many as possible. As I mentioned, we’ll go back every day or so for a few days to make sure that they are actually going away.
Our problem was so great that the trees, branches and leaves were white…like a light layer of snow was on the plants.
